#skeptic

Read through the most famous quotes by topic #skeptic




...I believe there is a legitimate aim of transcendence that is more modest and perhaps more realistic. We may not be able to rule out the skeptical possibility, and we may not be able to ground our normal capacity for understanding on something in which we can have even greater confidence; but it may still be possible to show how we can reasonably retain our natural confidence in the exercise of understanding, in spite of the apparent contingencies of our nature and formation. The hope is not to discover a foundation that makes our knowledge unassailably secure but to find a way of understanding ourselves that is not radically self-undermining, and that does not require us to deny the obvious. The aim would be to offer a plausible picture of how we fit into the world. Even in this more modest enterprise both theism and naturalistic reductionism fall short. Theism does not offer a sufficiently substantial explanation of our capacities, and naturalism does not offer a sufficiently reassuring one.


Thomas Nagel


#radically-self-undermining #skeptical #nature

What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.


Christopher Hitchens


#skepticism #religion

God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance.


Neil deGrasse Tyson


#philosophy #religion #science #skepticism #religion

Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know—the Church does neither.


Robert G. Ingersoll


#science #skepticism #religion

The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.


Bertrand Russell


#extremism #opinion #opinions #passion #rationalism

You could just as well say that an agnostic is a deeply religious person with at least a rudimentary knowledge of human fallibility.


Carl Sagan


#religion #skepticism #religion

Science has carried us to the gateway to the universe. And yet our conception of our surroundings remains the disproportionate view of the still-small child. We are spiritually and culturally paralyzed, unable to face the vastness, to embrace our lack of centrality and find our actual place in the fabric of nature. We batter this planet as if we had someplace else to go. That we even do science is a hopeful glimmer of mental health. However, it's not enough merely to accept these insights intellectually while we cling to a spiritual ideology that is not only rootless in nature but also, in many ways, contemptuous of what is natural.


Ann Druyan


#science #skepticism #nature

Not one of the orthodox ministers dare preach what he thinks if he knows a majority of his congregation think otherwise. He knows that every member of his church stands guard over his brain with a creed, like a club, in his hand. He knows that he is not expected to search after the truth, but that he is employed to defend the creed. Every pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a hired culprit, defending the justice of his own imprisonment.


Robert G. Ingersoll


#religion #skepticism #religion

To be a philosophical Sceptic is the first and most essential step towards being a sound, believing Christian.


David Hume


#christianity #religion #skepticism #nature

I don't differentiate much, except in degree, between people who believe in religion from those who believe in astrology, magic or the supernatural.


Andy Rooney


#astrology #atheism #belief #beliefs #magic